Prosecutors in the Alex Murdaugh double murder case have criticized a defense lawyers’ recent court filing seeking deep dive cellphone data as containing “inexplicable false assertions.”

The alleged false assertions are being made “in highly prejudicial public filings by design,” prosecutors said in a filing in Colleton County court late Tuesday morning.

Previous false statements by defense attorneys have been about a “nonexistent polygraph,” testimony about traffic and expense in the city of Charleston and “linking a completely unrelated Allendale case” to the Murdaugh case, prosecutors said in their filing.

Currently, the defense claims it lacks cell phone data that prosecutors have already turned over to the defense, the filing said.

“The defense’s claims continue to lack credibility,” the filing said.

Murdaugh defense attorney Dick Harpootlian, asked to comment on prosecutors’ allegations, said Tuesday afternoon, “Any response we have will be in the courtroom next Friday.”

Judge Debra McCaslin has set Friday, Oct. 16, at the Lexington County courthouse for a hearing to air numerous pretrial issues in the case.

In recent weeks, Harpootlian and his fellow defense attorneys have questioned prosecutors in court filings for allegedly trying to keep crucial evidence from them.

Murdaugh’s trial is set to begin April 5 at the Sumter County courthouse.

Murdaugh’s first trial for the killings of his wife Maggie and son Paul was held in 2023 at the Colleton County courthouse. It lasted six weeks. The jury deliberated about three hours before finding Murdaugh guilty of two murders. Judge Clifton Newman sentenced Murdaugh to two consecutive life sentences. The killings took place in rural Colleton County at the Murdaugh family’s 1,700-acre estate.

In May, the state Supreme Court unanimously overturned Murdaugh’s convictions and sentences and granted him a new trial. Justices found unlawful jury tampering by former Colleton County clerk of court Becky Hill had deprived Murdaugh of his right to a fair trial.

Prosecutors’ allegations

In a filing Tuesday, prosecutors outlined why they say the defense’s claims that it did not receive cellphone data are “false.”

Many items the defense has received “multiple times years earlier,” prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors said some very specific allegations by defense lawyers about missing data on Paul and Maggie’s cell phones “are completely without basis in fact.”

In 2022, when a defense expert incorrectly opened a file and spoiled the data, prosecutors provided a new copy and took steps in other incidents to make sure the defense had what it was asking for, the prosecutors’ filing said.

“Thus on multiple occasions, prior to the first trial, the State provided the defense with the complete ‘raw’ extractions for the relevant phones, and went above and beyond to accommodate the defense,” the filing said.

The “most egregious” misstatement by defense lawyers is that a defense allegation of an incident where cellphone data went missing in the opening days of the 2023 trial never happened at all, prosecutors wrote.

“The defense couldn’t keep its evidence straight,” prosecutors wrote.

The filing lists State Attorney General Alan Wilson and prosecutors Creighton Waters, Don Zelenka, John Meadors, John Conrad and David Fernandez.

Besides Harpootlian, defense lawyers in the case are Jim Griffin, Maggie Fox, Phil Barber and Andrew Hand.

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